


Breaking Bad, Season 1, Episode 1, Pilot

by TheSomewhatRamblingReviewer



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Analysis, Episode Review, Episode: s01e01 Pilot, Meta, Nonfiction, Season/Series 01, Series Premiere, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-17
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:22:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26503603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSomewhatRamblingReviewer/pseuds/TheSomewhatRamblingReviewer
Summary: Warning: Contains spoilers for the episode and possible mild spoilers the rest of the series. Complete.
Kudos: 2





	Breaking Bad, Season 1, Episode 1, Pilot

This is the first episode of the show I’ve ever watched, and I haven’t read much in the way of spoilers.

Open an RV being erratically driven in a desert. It’s shown an underwear-clad, gas mask-wearing Walter White is driving. An unconscious, gas-wearing, fully clothed Jesse Pinkman is in the passenger seat, and it’s shown there are, at least, two bloodied, either unconscious or dead bodies slipping around in the back.

The RV is crashed, and when Walter gets out, he puts his glasses on after taking off his gas mask. The fact I can’t pinpoint where he grabbed them from sort of bugs me due to the fact it sort of reads that he just produced them out of thin air, but more than this: Oh, geez, more than his the gas mask being foggy, he was driving without them. It makes sense they likely wouldn’t fit underneath the gas mask, but a person who requires corrective aids in order safely operate a vehicle not wearing any when operating a vehicle is twitch-inducing.

On a different note, he seems to have a needle-like thing sticking out from his wedding ring, and what is that?

So, he puts on a shirt, and as he does, the unconscious Jesse is shown with his head lying against the dashboard. Hearing sirens, he pries a gun from one of the men’s hands, and shoving Jesse aside, he digs a camcorder out of the dashboard.

Good thing this didn’t cause paralysis in Jesse.

He records this message: “Uh. My name is Walter Hartwell White… To all law enforcement entities, this is not an admission of guilt. I am speaking to my family now. Skyler, you are the love of my life; I hope you know that. Walter junior, you’re my big man. They’re, uh, they are going to be some things, things that you come to learn about me in the next few days. I just want you to know that no, no matter how it may look, I only had you in my heart. Goodbye.”

Given his address to Walter junior, I was expecting a little kid, not a teenage boy. WJ has cerebral palsy, but he isn’t mentally disabled in anyway. However, I imagine some part of Walt was remembering his little boy in the moment.

After the recording, he points the gun in towards the sounds of the sirens.

The credits are creative with isolating parts of people’s names to show elements on the periodic table.

Three weeks earlier, insomniac Walt is exercising, and it’s clear via all the baby stuff shown that his wife is pregnant. He has a mild coughing fit, and it’s shown via a framed award he contributed to a work that won the Nobel Peace prize. In the morning, Skyler gives him fake bacon for his 50th birthday, and she and WJ snip at one another about her using the hot water and him not getting up early enough in her opinion.

I can understand why many people don’t like the character of Skyler, but the fact Anna Gunn has been personally attacked is terrible. Performers aren’t their characters. It’s not okay to send nasty letters or, worse, death threats to someone, and though just trash-talking someone is likely covered by free speech, declaring someone a bad/annoying/unsavoury person solely on the basis of not liking a character they’ve played isn’t a good thing to do.

Walt drives WJ to school, and it’s shown Walt is a chemistry teacher. His class is fairly apathetic, but thankfully, unlike some American shows, this is realistically shown. I swear, some shows featuring high school students, I question whether the American writers were ever in a high school themselves as teens.

Despite the apathy, Walt is an enthusiastic geek, and I’ve known teachers like this.

The enthusiastic desire to share knowledge, I mean. As far as I know, none of the teachers I’ve known had/have a side-gig as a drug king/queenpin.

After class, he works a second job at a car wash, and some asshole students demean him over this.

On his way home, it’s shown his car needs minor repairs.

At home, his family has thrown a surprise party for him. Skyler’s sister and brother-in-law are introduced, and I like them even less than I like Skyler. The brother-in-law, Hank, is a Drug Enforcement agent, and I genuinely hope their real-life employees execute better gun safety than he does.

Hank insults Walt several times, and then, doing this during his brother-in-law’s birthday party, he turns on the TV so that everyone can watch an interview he did about a drug bust.

Walter shows an interest in how much money was seized, and Hank offers to take Walt on a ride-along if Walt ever wants to.

After the party, there’s an uncomfortable scene of a distracted Skyler giving Walt a handjob.

Honestly, I think he would have been fine with no sexual activity. She, however, seems to feel, it being a special day, some form is warranted, but she has no real interest. She’s not doing anything against her will or forcing him to anything against his, but this isn’t something either of them particularly want.

Now, if she were actually into it, I think he would be, too, but again, he probably would have preferred nothing to this.

The next day, he falls unconscious at the car wash, and in the ambulance, he insists to a paramedic it’s just a bug going around. When the paramedic asks if he’s a smoker, however, he starts to realise it might be something else.

In a hospital, it’s revealed he has inoperable lung cancer, and he’s semi-dissociated about all this.

He goes home, and Skyler immediately fusses about him using a certain credit card. When she asks about his day, he doesn’t tell her about the news.

Back at the car wash, he’s still somewhat dissociating, and then, throwing several f-bombs, he straight-up quits.

There’s a scene of him throwing lit matches into a swimming pool. Calling Hank, he asks to go on the ride-along.

On said ride-along, Hank and the partner who was at the party, an AOC, make bets on whether the meth-cooker is a POC, and Walt shows an interest in knowing how they know a certain house is a meth lab. A snitch, is the answer.

For all I don’t like Hank, there is a cool moment where it’s shown he specifically made sure to wait until after a school bus had passed out of the area to signal for the raid to begin.

Being upfront: I firmly believe all narcotics should either be legalised or, at least, decriminalised. Therefore, I don’t agree with what the DEA’s current purpose is. All this said, however, I can’t deny how badass this scene with gas-masked, uniformed DEA agents ride-standing on a black vehicle looks.

The arrest is made, and it turns out the cooker is Asian. Therefore, the partner gets ten dollars, and Hank gets thirty. Walt asks to go inside the house.

Hank hesitates before deciding, after he and his partner check it out first, Walt can come in.

When they go in, Walt witnesses Jesse exiting a different house via an upstairs window in nothing but a pair of underwear. He falls off the roof whilst trying to put on a pair of trousers, and a topless woman throws stuff down at him. It’s shown he’s trying to get away from the area without attracting the notice of the DEA.

Walt recognises him as a former student, and he gets a good look at Jesse’s car and back license plate before Jesse drives away.

That night, Jesse is covering the car when Walt shows up. Jesse’s information is still in the school records, and Walt says something about Jesse’s aunt owning the house. Jesse corrects he owns it.

Jesse’s both scared Walt is trying to entrap him and half-expecting Walt to just be there to lecture him. The look on his face when Walt suggests they team-up is awesome.

Walt has several lines showing his contempt for Jesse during this scene, and given this, it’s not surprising when he calmly blackmails Jesse: Either they team-up, or he goes to those DEA agents he was with earlier to tell them what he saw in addition to directing them to Jesse’s house.

There’s a scene of Skyler and her sister, and they’re both annoying. Interestingly, though, the sister is picking there’s something going on with her brother-in-law, whereas, Skyler is convinced there’s nothing really going on with her own husband other than him maybe being a little quieter.

Over to said husband, he’s stealing lab supplies from the school.

In broad daylight.

He goes over to Jesse’s, and despite their mutual dislike for one another, Walt does have enthusiasm for the knowledge he’s about to craft. Jesse insists cooking meth is an art, not chemistry.

For all Jesse is an idiot, because, yes, chemistry is definitely a part of making meth, cooking anything can be an art. Some people have a natural talent for making good-quality stuff, and some people, as long as they follow the directions, the product will likely come out okay. And then, there are some people who, even if they follow the directions perfectly, somehow, the product just won’t come out right.

I could never do this, but one of my great-grandmothers never used recipes yet always cooked delicious meals. Another family member asked for a recipe for a certain dish she made, and one day when she was making the dish, she wrote down every step of what she did. When the family member used this recipe, it came out good but not as well as my great-grandmother always made it.

Back to the scene, Walt insists this product is going to be pure without things such as baby formula and chilli pepper, and he also insists there will be safe lab conditions employed. Jesse uses a homophobic slur when declaring he won’t be wearing protective gear.

After they get everything unloaded, Jesse announces they won’t be making it at his house, and this is actually smart, but I wouldn’t blame Walt for smacking him here. This is something that should have been discussed before the unloading so that Walt could decide whether he wanted to unload it or just drive it somewhere else.

Walt asks where they’re going to cook, then, and Jesse’s like, hey, you want to run the show, then, you figure these details out.

However, when Walter starts trying to figure it out, they brainstorm together, and it’s decided they’ll buy an RV.

The relationship between these two is interesting. Despite his contempt for Jesse, in the next scene, Walt gives Jesse a large amount of money to buy the RV with. Apparently, he genuinely has no concern Jesse might screw him over.

For Jesse’s part, he doesn’t.

What he does do is a partial title-drop when he insists on knowing why Walt wants this team-up. If Walt’s suddenly gone crazy, that could really affect Jesse himself.

Walt doesn’t give a clear answer.

Next, WJ is having trouble getting on a pair of jeans in a dressing room, and it looks to me as if he could have gotten it himself given a little more time. When Skyler asks from outside if she wants help from her or Walt, though, he simply answers the latter.

She would have just kept on if he hadn’t.

Coming in, Walt helps.

Outside the dressing room, Skyler and WJ are discussing said jeans when some nearby teenagers are assholes towards WJ.

Walt doesn’t take kindly to this, and in real life, I’d say he went too far, but this being TV, good on him. I know parents who wouldn’t resort to physical violence, but they’d definitely take anyone messing with their kid down several notches.

Over in the desert, Jesse and Walt have the RV, and I really love some of Jesse’s expressions during this episode. Walt starts to undress, and Jesse is basically, ‘?!?!?’

Bryan Cranston’s great here, too. The way Walt starts to undress is completely casual with no awkwardness, and Walt doesn’t even realise he’s doing anything abnormal from Jesse’s POV at first.

He explains he’s not risking his good clothes as well as not going home smelling like a meth lab.

Jesse wants assurance Walt’s underwear will stay on, and sighing, Walt just heads into the RV.

Inside, Jesse starts to use the camcorder, and he seems pretty interested in zooming in on Walt’s bottom. Upon realising Jesse is recording their illegal activities, Walt doesn’t decide to use his science-y brain to dispose of Jesse’s body in the desert.

There’s a montage of them making the meth, and honestly, it just looks two guys doing science stuff to me. Since I’ve never been one for science stuff, I’m glad this was a short montage.

Jesse, on the other hand, is extremely impressed with the result. “This is art, Mr White!”

The meth does resemble pretty crystals, but I’d be more impressed if they’d made actual crystals a person could hang up as decorations.

Next, Jesse goes to a man with a dog, and I hate this man. The dog has a docked tail, and it’s being trained to tear up a stuffed, human-sized dummy. Surprisingly, however, the dog doesn’t have cropped ears, and that’s good, at least.

To clarify, I don’t have a problem with breeds who naturally have no tail (Manx cats are one example) or dogs who naturally have upward pointing ears (French bulldogs are one example). I don’t agree with people who crop and/or dock their pets. Any rare cases where it’s an actual medical necessity rather than just for aesthetics is discounted from my disapproval.

Trying to interest the man in the product, Jesse also tries to get friendly with the dog, and the dog is aggressive in rebuffing him.

It’s revealed the man is the cousin of the Asian guy who got arrested. Also, the cousin is there, and they think Jesse might have been the snitch. Based on the acting, I don’t think Jesse was.

They demand to know where Jesse got this new product.

Over to the desert, the cousins and Jesse roll up to Walt. The on-bail cousin accuses Walt off being DEA, and Jesse urges Walt to run. Jesse manages to trip in the process of trying to run himself, and the cousins consider killing both.

Walt offers to teach the cousins how to make the pretty crystals themselves in exchange for letting both him and Jesse live.

Jesse is taped up, and OBC kicks him before going into the RV.

Walt insists OBC not smoke in there. Then, he does something science-y to cause gas, and getting out, he locks the cousins inside.

Going over, Walt un-tapes Jesse, but the cigarette OBC threw out has started a grass fire.

After stupidly wasting time trying to put it out, he gets a gas mask on both himself in Jesse, and he’s driving.

Is there a reason he didn’t take the cousins’ car? There are several potentially sensible reasons he wouldn’t, but I’m just wondering what the reason is.

The crash happens, and back to him with the gun, he tries to use it on himself. It doesn’t work, and I’m not sure if this is due to there being no more bullets after it was used by one of the cousins to try to shoot their way out of the RV or if the safety’s on.

He does manage to shoot it after pointing it away from himself, but I can’t tell if this is due to him putting a bullet in it or getting the safety off.

Look, my grasp of gun safety is solid: I should never, ever handle a gun unless someone who knows all the rules of gun safety and has a good understanding of how guns actually work is supervising me.

Even without supervision, though, I know better than to unload a gun at a party of full of civilians and hand it to any untrained civilians, because, even if a person knows a gun is unloaded, it should be assumed the gun is actually loaded.

Back to the scene, it turns out the sirens belong to firefighters, and they completely ignore the half-dressed man standing next to a crashed RV as they roll by.

If there were only one truck, okay, but there are three. One of them couldn’t have stayed behind to figure out what’s going on, if this person might need help, if this person might have information about the fire?

After this, a bruised Jesse stumbles out. He asks what Walt did, and explaining, Walt proceeds to vomit.

Even without the cancer, this isn’t a surprising thing.

There’s a short scene of Walt literally laundering money before he goes to bed. Skyler is confused and concerned with what’s going on with him lately, and they start to have vigorous sex.

Fin.


End file.
